St. Anselm of Canterbury, Bishop and Doctor
Today is the memorial of St. Anselm of Canterbury, a Bishop and Doctor of the Church. He was very much a part of the educational aspect of the Church’s amazing history. Whatever you might think of our country’s current, corrupt universities, our civilization’s system of higher education grew from monasteries and arch-dioceses, because of Christians’ struggles to understand God—and the universe that he’s created. An explosion of education began in the late 1000s, as the monasteries and the arch-dioceses founded universities. The first university was founded at Bologna, Italy, by the archbishop. Very soon came Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. Eighty-one universities were founded during that 100-year period alone—all by the Church.
During the first half of the 1200s, a then-new method of investigation was created. It was called Scholasticism. It is a precursor of our modern scientific method. Scholasticism was focused on developing precise definitions by using reasoning that is deeply based in scripture, theology, and philosophy, for the one great purpose for which God gave us minds: to understand and grow closer to Him. St. Anselm is called “the Father of Scholasticism.”
Because of the combination of his deep piety, his compassion for others, and his administrative skills, he was appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury (the highest church-position in England) in AD 1094. He taught that faith and reason are harmonious, and that they can be used together to discover the answers to questions about God, human beings, and the meaning of life. Faith is the starting point. That’s followed by the objective experiences and discoveries in which we live out Christ’s teachings in our real-world daily lives.
It was soon before Anselm’s tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury that England underwent a huge cultural, political, and social upheaval. The Normans, led by William the Conqueror, invaded England and overthrew it. This event changed everything in the country, from its laws to even its language. It seemed as though the known world had come to an end: there was terrible lack of food and social infrastructure, and everyone was suffering. It seemed, to many people, that God must not exist.
It was in that context that Anselm wrote two of his most famous and enduring books. Both are still studied today. The first was titled the Proslogion. Since many people now were doubting the faith, Anselm formulated a line of thought, appealing to reason instead of to faith, to prove the existence of God. It was hugely influential in re-stabilizing society.
Anselm’s second work was titled Why God Became Man. Anselm’s answer to that “why” begins by pointing out that God became man in the midst of our terrible suffering—like that imposed by the Normans—terrible suffering that man inflicts on man. God became man so that you and I could be rescued, forgiven, healed. We all have committed warfare against God. That is, we sin and continue to sin—against each other, against our own selves, against God’s creation, and above all against God Himself. God has compassion on us, and wants to forgive us, but simple pardon is impossible even for God—because he is just, because he is fair. Terrible evil, such as the horror that the Normans wreaked on England, is too terrible for a good God to ignore. There must be justice.
Since it’s our fallen human nature that leads us into sin, it must be someone with our same human nature who makes atonement for sin. But, as the Bible says, no one is sinless, “no, not one.” So God is caught, so it seems, on the horns of a dilemma: he mustn’t surrender his justice, but he cannot surrender his mercy either. God solved the dilemma by becoming human for the purpose of offering himself in our place, taking on himself your and my sins, so that we could receive life eternal. Since he’s human, he satisfies justice and fair-play. Since he’s God, he satisfies true compassion, by dying in our place, for our sins and for those of the whole world—even those of the Normans.
Now, there’s the kind of original thinking (original at the time) that universities were created for! There’s the kind of thinking that universities should still be used for!
St. Anselm, pray for us!
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